Announcing the new RealSSD C300

To explain why today’s announcement of Micron’s new RealSSD C300 is a game-changer for speed and storage in notebook and desktop PCs, I asked our SSD expert, Dean Klein, to share some of the thinking that went into the product and what you’ll experience the first time you boot up a computer with a RealSSD C300 inside.

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2 Comments

ayu510  on March 15th, 2010

Dean Kelin

“When operating on the existing SATA 3Gb/s standard.” You also mentioned SATA 6gb/s which is known as SATA 3.0. I am confused for the maximum performance part. So i would need a Motherboard that has SATA 3.0 6gb/s? If i purchased an Asus P6T SE /w SATA or SATA II would it be a big difference between the SATA 3.0 6gb/s?

Dean Klein  on March 16th, 2010

Thanks for the comment, Ayu510.

The C300 has a backwards compatible SATA interface, so it works with any SATA connector. You’re right that you’ll need to have a SATA 6 Gb/s interface (either on the motherboard or via an HBA) to get maximum performance, though. The top sequential read speeds for the C300 are 355 MB/s, but SATA 3 Gb/s doesn’t have enough bandwidth for that. On SATA 3 Gb/s, the sequential reads throttle back to 265 MB/s—that’s equal to or better than the fastest drives on the market, but definitely not the full potential of the C300. Whether or not this makes a big difference to you will probably depend on your application. If you’re still using a hard drive you’ll find that switching to the RealSSD-C300 SATA-II 3Gbps speed is like a night and day difference. If you are using some application that does a lot of large sequential transfers you may want to go all the way to a motherboard or adapter with SATA 6Gbps.

Sorry for the confusion around SATA 3, SATA 2, SATA 3Gbps and SATA 6Gbps. The industry does have a naming problem here. But at least the industry has done a good job of maintaining backwards compatibility. Here’s a decoder ring for you, below. Keep in mind that there is interoperability between all of the specs – it’s just that the maximum theoretical transfer rate will be limited by the system controller or the drive, depending on which meets the slower spec.

SATA Spec Comparison Table

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